Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (5 page)
Read Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles Online
Authors: Don Felder,Wendy Holden
Tags: #Arts & Photography, #Music, #Musical Genres, #Popular, #Rock, #Biographies & Memoirs, #Arts & Literature, #Composers & Musicians, #Entertainers, #Memoirs, #Humor & Entertainment, #Theory; Composition & Performance, #Pop Culture
BOOK: Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles
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I couldn’t afford my own records to keep up with the latest sounds, so I listened to the radio endlessly. I had an old wooden one in my room, which quickly usurped any attention I might otherwise have given to homework. In Gainesville, most of the white-owned stations stopped broadcasting at sundown. If the weather was good and there wasn’t a big storm between Florida and Tennessee, I could wiggle the antenna around until I picked up WLAC in Nashville, at 1510 on the AM dial, the only station playing black music. Through its crackly broadcasts hosted by Gene Nobles, I was introduced to legends like B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and Muddy Waters. Tired of Pat Boone’s mind-numbing version of “Tutti Frutti” all day on the regular channels, I’d listen at night, open-mouthed, to Little Richard strutting his stuff.
With my hair greased to one side and my jeans pegged in on my mother’s pedal Singer sewing machine, I started getting into the North Florida music scene in a serious way. I took a lead from Dad and began to borrow other people’s records—Elvis, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley and His Comets—in fact, just about everything from the dawn of rock and roll. Using Dad’s Voice of Music machine, I’d record them on one channel while I played guitar on the other, trying to mimic the rock-and-roll greats. Once my dad upgraded to a better stereo, I requisitioned his old one and carried it carefully to my bedroom, giving up all thoughts of academic study, to spend my nights devoted to music.
My second public performance came when I was fourteen. I entered a talent contest at junior high school and walked onto the stage alone with a guitar and an amp. “OK now, boys and girls, let’s hear a rousing round of applause for our next contestant—Donald Felder,” the host announced, feedback screaming through his mike. I was far more nervous than my last gig, chiefly because I now knew everyone in the audience, but I somehow managed to play “Walk Don’t Run,” by the Ventures, well enough to be recognizable. There was a crowd of about five hundred, and the reaction was surprising. They seemed to like me, and by the end of the gig, I’d acquired newfound status. My peers were at the age when, like me, they were identifying with their rock-and-roll heroes, and I suddenly found that, as the nearest Gainesville equivalent, I had fans. Best of all, some of them were girls. With my fair complexion and lean looks, I was apparently considered a catch, now that I had proven musical talent. Needless to say, I reveled in my new cool.
Three weeks after that performance, one of my teachers suggested I contact the local radio station, WGGG, which regularly aired Gainesville’s best amateurs. He came with me and, because he knew one of the DJs, fixed it for me to play live. Standing in a tiny recording studio, in front of a microphone, I hammered out two instrumental songs, “Apache,” written by Jerry Lordan and popularized by the Shadows, and my old standby, “Walk Don’t Run.” A few of my friends heard the broadcast. “You done good, Don,” they told me. “It was real neato.” They made me feel like someone, like Elvis even. I was amazed even then how just stepping up to the microphone affected the way people viewed me. The DJ, a guy called Jim, whose full-time job was as a driver for the local Williams-Thomas funeral home, offered to help me make up some tapes. He and I became good friends and used to hang out in the viewing room of the funeral parlor at night, playing Frisbee beside the plinth where the open caskets stood.
I put together a small band at school with Kenny Gibbs and his brother, and we practiced regularly in their garage. His mother wanted us to call ourselves the Moonbeams, but we thought that name sucked. I can’t remember what we decided on in the end, but we eventually evolved into the Continentals. It was sort of my band. I put it together and had cards made up with my telephone number on it for bookings. As was the nature of teenage bands in a college town, players came and went as they dropped in and out of Gainesville for their studies. Kenny played bass for a while, not because he was particularly talented; he just looked good and pulled in the girls. He also had the money to buy equipment, which was vital. There were two other bass players who were much better, Barry Scurran, a college student from Miami, and a guy named Stan Stannell.
I’d go over to Stan’s house for a rehearsal, and he’d be sitting on his bed in his underwear for hours, foot propped up on a little stool, reading sheet music for classical guitar. He was a phenomenal player, but if you put an electric guitar in his hand, it sounded awful. The only thing that worked for him was bass, because of the similarities with classical technique. He played with us for about a year and then moved on, ending up as head of the guitar department of the Boston Conservatory of Music. I had probably one of the best classical guitar players in the country playing bass in my teenage rock-and-roll band, and I didn’t even know it.
The other players in the band’s various incarnations included a drummer named Jeff Williams, a freshman at the university who fixed us some great bookings for fraternity parties (we lied about our age); Lee Chipley, a sax player; and a guitarist and singer called Joe Maestro. The most itinerant of all was a young man who arrived in Gainesville out of the blue. He met Jeff at a gig and asked if he could recommend somewhere to stay.
“I ran into this kid at a frat party, and he sings and plays real good rhythm guitar. I think he should be in our band,” Jeff told us one day.
“Great! What’s his name?” I asked.
“Stephen,” Jeff replied, “Stephen Stills.”
Jeff was right. Stephen had one of the most distinctive voices I’d ever heard. He was fifteen, with short, blond hair, incredibly funny, outgoing, and confident—the type who’d sit with a guitar and play and sing by himself without any qualms. He had a rebellious, independent streak in him, but he wasn’t off the tracks. I don’t think he’d been especially bad to warrant being sent to a military academy; he was just caught more often than the rest of us. He lived at Jeff’s house for a while, and we wound up doing some shows together, with him as the newest member of the Continentals.
One night we did a gig at the Palatka prom and stayed overnight in a hotel room with two double beds. I think we got a lift to the gig in the back of someone’s pickup truck. Somehow, even though we were underage, we managed to get hold of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Stephen and Kenny and Jeff and I ended up jumping up and down on those double beds, screaming at the tops of our voices, like kids who’d been left alone in the house by themselves. We were laughing and bouncing around, breaking bedsprings, and having a gas. It was probably one of my fondest memories of that whole time.
Next thing I knew, Stephen was gone. He just disappeared, without an explanation or a good-bye. I always assumed his trail had started getting hot, but I heard later that he took off for Tampa and then Latin America when his family moved there. Whatever the reason, he just evaporated. I didn’t think I’d ever see or hear from him again.
In the summer of ’61,
Dad drove me to Daytona Beach to see “Mister Guitar,” Chet Atkins, in concert, a legend of Nashville and later a guitar designer for Gibson and Gretsch. Dad and I went alone, on a rare outing together. The gig was amazing. I sat open-mouthed as Chet captivated an audience of two or three thousand fans, just him and his guitar. Not only did he use an incredible syncopated thumb and finger technique, but he’d developed a routine of playing different tunes with his left and right hand simultaneously. On the lower strings he’d play “Yankee Doodle” and, on the upper, “Dixie.” It was like the North and the South finally reunited. I was dazzled and started borrowing his records from friends, copying them religiously. I learned by ear, listening where each note was, guessing the fingering. I couldn’t afford sheet music.
Dad drove me to Daytona Beach to see “Mister Guitar,” Chet Atkins, in concert, a legend of Nashville and later a guitar designer for Gibson and Gretsch. Dad and I went alone, on a rare outing together. The gig was amazing. I sat open-mouthed as Chet captivated an audience of two or three thousand fans, just him and his guitar. Not only did he use an incredible syncopated thumb and finger technique, but he’d developed a routine of playing different tunes with his left and right hand simultaneously. On the lower strings he’d play “Yankee Doodle” and, on the upper, “Dixie.” It was like the North and the South finally reunited. I was dazzled and started borrowing his records from friends, copying them religiously. I learned by ear, listening where each note was, guessing the fingering. I couldn’t afford sheet music.
I figured that if I recorded stuff on Dad’s tape machine at seven and a half inches per second and played it back at three and three quarters, it would be an octave down but the same key and the same tonality, just half as fast. That way I could listen string by string, pick by pick, finger by finger. I tried to get my speed up to where I could actually play it in unison with Chet. I must have struggled with that “Yankee Doodle”/“Dixie” piece for over a year, working on it for a couple of hours every day, but I still couldn’t figure it out. One night I’d had enough and threw my guitar down on the bed in disgust. I went off to sleep, and somehow, during the night, my brain ran the sequences and came up with the solution. In the morning, I picked up the guitar and, to my complete amazement, I had it, note-perfect.
Not that my entire life revolved around music.
There were plenty of other distractions for a boy teetering on the brink of manhood. First, I had to earn some money to pay for tapes and guitar strings. Along with paid chores for the neighbors, I took a Saturday position working for Sharon Pringle’s father in his shoe store, on the corner of Main Street, right opposite the five-and-dime. It was an absolutely miserable job for a horny young guy to be in—kneeling at the feet of all these pretty young girls, inhaling their scent as they tried on shoes, my face coloring scarlet every time they spoke to me. I didn’t last long. The pain was too much to bear.
There were plenty of other distractions for a boy teetering on the brink of manhood. First, I had to earn some money to pay for tapes and guitar strings. Along with paid chores for the neighbors, I took a Saturday position working for Sharon Pringle’s father in his shoe store, on the corner of Main Street, right opposite the five-and-dime. It was an absolutely miserable job for a horny young guy to be in—kneeling at the feet of all these pretty young girls, inhaling their scent as they tried on shoes, my face coloring scarlet every time they spoke to me. I didn’t last long. The pain was too much to bear.
My next job was working at the new music store in town. Lipham Music opened in the shopping center just down from the old drugstore, the only place I could buy guitar strings previously. Run by old man Lipham and his son Buster, the new store was revolutionary for Gainesville and its big-band fans. There wasn’t a saxophone, trombone, or piano in sight—just guitars and sheet music. It was truly a symbol of the new rock-and-roll era.
Walking past one day, I stopped in my tracks and stared hard into the window. There, almost as if it were waiting for me, was a Fender Stratocaster, just like the one Buddy Holly played. Right in front of my eyes. In Gainesville. It was pretty beat up, and could do with some work, but it was for sale and I simply had to have it. Pushing open the door, I hovered around the edges of the shop until Mr. Lipham finally approached.
“Can I help you, son?” he asked, a bemused smile on his face.
“I’d like to buy the Fender Stratocaster in the window,” I said, all in a rush. “I have a Fender Musicmaker to trade, in its original case, and I don’t have any money right now, but I could pay you something every week.”
Mr. Lipham rubbed his chin with his hand and looked me up and down. “Can you play?” he asked, suspiciously.
“Yes, sir,” I volunteered, confidently.
“Show me,” he replied, reaching for a used guitar from the rack. I slung the strap around my neck and duly gave him a sample of my rapidly expanding repertoire.
“Hmmm. How about paying me off at the rate of ten dollars a month?” he asked, when I’d finished. Seeing me falter, he added, “You can work here when you can, tuning and cleaning the guitars, clearing up, and showing people how to play. I’ll pay you a dollar fifty an hour.”
“Sure,” I beamed, and within an hour I was back home in my room banging the life out of that old Stratocaster.
My job in the store soon extended to that of music teacher. Mr. Lipham recommended me to some of his customers, and before I knew it, I was teaching ten-year-old snot-nosed kids who whined all the time because their fingers hurt and they thought they’d be able to play like Elvis the minute they picked up the guitar their parents had just bought them. My salary doubled, and I’d soon paid off the Stratocaster, even if the price—working with children—often seemed too high.
One of my students, however, showed real promise. His name was Tommy Petty, and he was my star pupil. Tommy was three years younger than me, skinny, with buckteeth and an awful guitar. I went over to his house to give him lessons, and he had a microphone set up and was belting it out, standing in his living room, singing and playing for all he was worth. I was impressed.
Tommy wasn’t an outstanding guitar player, but he had a voice somewhere between Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan, and a whole lot of nerve. Not long afterward, he became the lead singer with a band called the Rucker Brothers. I remember telling Tommy that one day he might even make it.
I advised his band on improving their guitar techniques and helped put together some of their arrangements. Sometimes I’d even travel out with them on a gig, standing in the audience to hear them play. Tommy was very good looking, with long silky hair he used to flip, which attracted the girls. While I was standing watching him perform in a Moose lodge one night, a really cute chick came up and started talking to me. She’d seen me help unload the band’s equipment and knew I was with them. To my surprise and delight, she invited me to go for a ride in her car during the break, and of course, I agreed. She drove down the road a little bit and pulled over, and we started kissing. But before anything serious happened, a car pulled up beside hers and a young man, as drunk as he could be, started yelling at us.
“Oh, Lord, it’s my boyfriend!” she screamed, pushing me away from her.
Ashen-faced, I watched as this linebacker pulled up in front of us, stepped out, and walked back along the asphalt road in the middle of nowhere, a murderous expression on his face. Happily for me, he was so drunk, he suddenly tripped and collapsed facedown in the road.
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